Today, seemingly more than in the past, companies are discovering that the general work force is ill-equipped and ill-trained, through a lack of formal training, prior work experience, or participation in apprenticeship programs, to perform necessary job-related tasks. Companies are also discovering that ill-trained workers fall into two major categories including a first category of workers who are new to the companies' industry and who have none of the necessary skills to perform tasks of interest to the companies. A second category of workers, perhaps including current employees, already have a certain type or level of skills, but do not have the required skills for a different job position having different skill requirements. Therefore, while still attempting to hire aptly-trained, qualified employees to fill various job positions, many companies have, nonetheless, undertaken the task of training workers to provide them with the skills and knowledge necessary to enable the workers to accomplish a variety of job-related tasks required by specific job positions and, thereby to become productive employees.
In order to accomplish the task of training workers, many companies send their workers to training programs which are developed and conducted by an in-house training department, or under contract, by an outside firm and which include company-specific content designed to meet company-defined training objectives. A company may also send its workers to training programs, conducted by outside firms or organizations, that are designed to generically train workers on a particular subject or task. Regardless of who develops, designs, and/or conducts a training program, such programs typically require that a worker attend a number of training sessions at a selected training site. Unfortunately, the training site is often distant from the worker's normal workplace (particularly when the training program is conducted by an outside firm or organization not under contract to the worker's company) and the training sessions are often on days and at times which do not fit conveniently into the worker's schedule. As a result, the worker must travel between the training site and the workplace and, perhaps, stay overnight near the training site. By requiring the worker to travel and to attend training sessions on inconvenient days and at inconvenient times, the worker's personal and professional lives are interrupted, potentially upsetting or distracting the worker and reducing his ability to learn new skills. Additionally, the worker's company incurs direct expenses related to the worker's travel and indirect expenses associated with the opportunity cost of work not accomplished while the worker is at the training site or while the worker travels to and from the training site.
The training sessions of typical training programs include presentations by individuals having certain relevant knowledge or expertise, "how-to" demonstrations, and "hands-on" training exercises. Such training sessions, especially if conducted without adequate company control, are often too long in duration and present too much training material, thereby causing many trainees to lose concentration and, otherwise, causing them to fail to comprehend and absorb the material. To make matters worse, it is often impossible to evaluate a trainee's comprehension and understanding of the training material provided in such training sessions and without such evaluation, it is difficult to determine whether or not additional training is necessary and if so, it is difficult to conduct immediate reenforcement training. Furthermore, unless the training program is developed in-house or under contract, the content of such training sessions may include material which is not relevant to, or up to date with, the objectives of a company.
Many companies have attempted to overcome the disadvantages associated with trainees having to travel to attend training programs by offering satellite-based instruction at the trainee's place of business. Unfortunately though, satellite-related equipment for satellite-based instruction is relatively expensive and is, therefore, often only available to a trainee in a specially-equipped training room. As a result, the trainee must still leave his work site (i.e., desk, workstation, etc.) to perform training. Also, because a company may only have one specially-equipped training room, the trainee must schedule use of the room or attend a scheduled satellite-based training session at time which is inconvenient. Some companies have attempted to overcome this scheduling difficulty by recording the satellite-based training sessions on videotape for later playback. Unfortunately though, the use of videotape does not alleviate the need for a trainee to leave his workstation in order to travel to a specially-equipped training room to view the videotape.
Other companies have attempted to counter the difficulties associated with conventional training programs by developing and offering self-paced training programs to their trainees. Sadly though, the performance of training exercises often required by such self-paced training programs is often not high on the list of priorities for many trainees. Other tasks, especially those tasks for which a trainee gets paid to perform and upon which a trainee's salary increases and/or promotions are based, typically receive more of the trainee's attention than does training. As a result, trainees often procrastinate with respect to performing self-paced training programs, or simply forget to perform them.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for a training system which reminds and enables individuals to perform training at their own workstation, at their own pace, and according to their own schedule and which can solve other related and unrelated problems that become apparent upon reading and understanding this specification.